Yen Le

Loc Nguyen

Ngoc Nguyen

MS in Leadership,

Vietnam

2016 Winner

Viettire’s Expansion Strategy In Myanmar

Country presented in the case: Vietnam, Myanmar 

The client for this consulting case — Mr. Hoang, General Director and Founder of Viettire– has to make a decision on how Viettire should expand its business into Myanmar. Over 20 years, Viettire has been building its reputation and has become one of the top distributors for tires in the Vietnam market. Now the company is ready for global expansion with Maxxis brand, but does it not know which path to pursue. Based on the current situation of the company, the case provides three strategic options for Viettire, analyzes each option through the thoroughly defined criteria, and recommends a decision for the company to follow in order to become successful.   

Wei Yang

MS in Leadership

How to Rescue “Wonderful Company” from Market Reduction

Country presented in the case: China

 Wonderful Company provides Chinese people with assistance applying and enrolling in higher education institutions abroad. However, there may occasionally be a mistake in a choice of the college for a student.  The case describes the situation when such a mismatch led to the media attention because of the student’s highly vocal mother. As a result, several banks refused to assist the transaction for the Wonderful Company. This led to the loss of the clients related to these banks and a many potential customers withdrew their applications to sign a contract with Wonderful Company. The company found itself at the edge of survival.  The case investigates the options to help Wonderful Company restore its business operations.

Elias Tsismenakis Jie Weng

MBA

The Growing Path of Short Path Distillery
Country presented in the case: United States

Short Path Distillery (SPD) is a craft distillery start-up. It has been in business since July of 2015 and is trying hard to establish its identity and build brand equity in order to get traction in its revenue and expedite growth. Located in Everett MA, SPD had been providing two craft spirit products to consumers — gin and rum, with an addition of two new releases of No. 14 Gin and SPD Triple Sec in its Flagship series. While profitability for SPD is good, it must be mindful of its burn-rate of investment capital and look to grow its top-line in order to create not only a sustainable, but also successful business. This consulting case investigates strategies for further growth of the company, including SPD’s distribution channels and marketing options.

Stefania Gentile Eric Salamon 

MBA

2016 Winner

Union Kitchen Handmade

Country presented in the case: United States

Faced with a highly competitive market, John and Ellen, founders of Union Kitchen, faced the dilemma of how to strategically grow their market share.  Neither of them had the ambition to turn the family business into a large company but they both wanted to continue to sustainably grow to ensure the business remained profitable enough to maintain their current lifestyles.  John and Ellen defined their options as follows: (a) Expand the party favors business through target marketing; (b) Increase repeat customers sales through a customer tracking system; and (c) Focus marketing and production efforts on candles rather than soaps. Being a small company, this decision will have a large impact on the business but as competition continues to increase, ignoring the dilemma and not taking action is not an option. Based on the strategic analysis detailed in this report, the team of authors provides recommendations on how Union Kitchen can focus on implementing a customer tracking system to increase repeat customer sales and develop the cross selling of products. 

Zhanhe Ma

MS in Leadership

2016 Finalist

The Survival of Hongta Bookstore

Country presented in the case: China

 This consulting case intends to help Jim, a manager of Hongta Bookstore, with the store’s organizational transformation. If Jim does not change the situation of Hongta Bookstore within three months and bring it back to sustainable sales and profit, the bookstore would be closed. There are market opportunities available for the store, but Jim’s actions are limited with guanxi relationships between the store owner and major stakeholders. The case investigates several options for Jim’s actions and analyzes each of them through the frames of organizational transformation. The case ends with the proposed solution and action plan for Jim to follow.

Ryan Lee

Karim Murr

Tahni Pierzga

Master in International Management

2016 Finalist

Custom Fixturing: Designing a Strategic Path

Country presented in the case: United States

Custom Fixturing is a family-owned business located in Malden, MA and is currently run by Katherine, the founder’s daughter. The company is a player in the retail fixture industry, which produces pieces like sign holders, shoe racks, and display tables for brick-and-mortar stores. This industry has experienced a steady-annualized growth, and Custom Fixturing’s assembly line has been running at full capacity, offering two categories of products: (a) artistic and custom one-off projects, and (b) standardized-mass-produced repetitive products. The majority of the company’s profit came from the (b) mass-manufactured, simple store fixtures, while the (a) one-off projects provide the negative return on investment. At the same time, one-off project are a core competency, a major competitive differentiation, and a great “window” to promote the company. “Why do we keep accepting these complex, one-off projects?” wondered Katherine. This consulting case assists Katherine in answering the following questions: Should she only accept mass manufacturing orders, which would change the competitor set? Should she continue to accept one-off orders? If she continued to accept one-off projects, how should she manage them and where would the “backing out” point be?

Phi Nguyen

Sang Tran

MS in Leadership, Vietnam

The Future Expansion Dilemma of Cao Viet Deimex

Country presented in the case: Vietnam

 The case is built around the dilemma of the newly appointed CEO of Cao Viet, Ms. Kim on how assure company extension and change the entire business model as the previous business model was not success. The team of case authors investigates the external and internal environment and analyzes several options for Cao Viet extension. The team recommended introducing a new line of service, a sub-brand named under the trademark of Cao Viet with competitive price, intelligent solutions, and offering the most savings. The team justifies this recommendation with the value that this decision brings to potential customers, including hotels and karaoke entertainments nearby. The team also introduces a plan for how Ms. Kim can involve company employees and major stakeholders as well as extend a line of involved stakeholders to make sure of the buy-in for the new business model.